everything seemed to be going fine then, 10mins later I was going to a website when it jumped to the about:blank page. My home page is still as it should be. The Backup program has appeared in my recent programs list, is that from making the previous changes or should it not be there?

i've also noticed spyware blaster will not run, an error message says it is corrupted due to a virus or hard disk problem. When I try to download Housecall I get an error message and internet explorer closes down! Are these connected?

It sounds like you have a similar problem to the one I just fixed. CWS also has a hidden trojan file dll that doesn't show up anywhere. See my thread and that of JohnCT. The trojan disrupts the ability of some activex controls like housecall uses. I don't know enough that I want to tell you how to do it, but I followed Caperjack's instructions to JohnCT and was able to fix it. The file he recommends to download "beta-fix" has been replaced with a new version called findnfix, don't know if it works the same.